Unlike Johnson, members of the contrarily named congressional supercommittee failed to deliver $1.2 trillion in vital federal deficit cuts.

Even though the committee was composed of some of Congress’ best and most experienced members, it failed in large part because the body lacks the giant legislators such as Johnson that used to ride herd over Congress.

Before Johnson became president in 1963, he spent 24 years in Congress — the last decade as a Senate leader.

He’d studied at the feet of legislative icon and long-serving House Speaker Sam Rayburn.

And by the time Johnson ran the Senate, he knew what it was to work in the minority and the majority in the House and the Senate. LBJ became the most powerful and effective American legislator of his generation, regularly shepherding legislation through Congress that he didn’t personally agree with, but that he recognized needed to be passed.

As a result, he fits firmly in the steady parade of pragmatic, get-it-done, legislative leaders that kept America moving forward for 200 years.

Most weren’t ideologues, but they knew the value of a good compromise, and man, could they pass legislation when it was needed.

Besides Texans Johnson and Rayburn, there were other towering legislative leaders such as Massachusetts’ Tip O’Neill and Bob Dole of Kansas. Working shoulder-to-shoulder with them were New Jersey’s Bill Bradley, West Virginia’s Robert Byrd, Arkansas’ William Fulbright and Pennsylvania’s own Arlen Specter.

Sadly those giants in Congress are sorely absent today, and the productivity of Washington reflects it.

Today, Congress lacks the practical leadership it swelled with in generations past. There are strong indicators that the shortfall started in the 1980s — the formative years for many current members of Congress.

Then, most of America’s best and brightest were seduced by the “Greed is good” siren’s song of Wall Street, scurried off to earn MBAs and have since expended their brain power in the private sector rather than public service.

That would certainly explain the B-team America is left with in Congress today and the corporate-financed, two-party hijacking of the nation’s political culture.

No disrespect to Pat Toomey, Pennsylvania’s first-term junior senator who was shockingly appointed to the federal deficit supercommittee, but there is no way a freshman senator could have landed on a congressional committee described as the most important of its generation when LBJ ran the Senate.

While just about anybody can get elected to the House, the Senate, Congress’ most powerful, deliberative and rigidly traditional arm, has always been run on seniority.

Throughout the nation’s existence, eager freshman senators had to bide their time, spending their first term at the feet of a veteran. During the early tutelage, they forged alliances across party lines and learned how to get things done.

But the caliber of Congress today is so paltry, and its ideological fragmentation so complete, that a freshman senator in his first year — who himself predicted he had no chance of landing on the supercommittee — wound up the GOP’s fiscal conservative ace on the panel, and floundered in his earnest attempt to construct bipartisan bonds.

To his credit, Toomey did attempt to lead, but you don’t throw a toddler into the deep end of a shark-infested pool and expect the child to calmly backstroke to the exit.

Similarly, anyone wondering why President Barack Obama has had such a difficult time in office should look to John F. Kennedy — the last freshman senator elected president.

Kennedy floundered in the early days of his administration.

He ordered the badly executed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, which failed to overthrow the communist regime and hastened the rise of Fidel Castro.

Nearly two years later, he brings the world to the brink of all-out nuclear war with the USSR over the planned placement of Soviet-made nuclear weapons in Cuba.

Kennedy also was reluctant to act as racial violence drew greater media attention to the civil rights movement.

It wasn’t until the latter part of his term that he found his legs, challenging the nation to put a man on the moon and sending the National Guard to ensure two blacks were allowed to register for classes at the University of Alabama.

Though Kennedy proposed the war on poverty and civil rights legislation, it was Johnson, the shrewd legislative veteran who replaced him in the White House, that got the ambitious agenda passed.

Until the body politic can produce legislators such as Johnson, Dole or O’Neill, who learned their craft and were not afraid to legislate against party line or contributor interests, the nation will continue down a gloomy path where subsequent generations won’t inherit America’s century-old promise of a better life than that of their parents.

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